Friday, March 17

Berenika Webster, Coordinator of Strategic Assessment, University Library System

Maximize your research potential: learn to identify star collaborators and research opportunities with SciVal

Today’s research landscape is more competitive than never, with many researchers vying for resources and recognition. It is critical for early-career researchers to develop a good understanding of the landscape of their research field: current trends, leading institutions and researchers, collaboration opportunities and impact.

This hands-on workshop will introduce participants to SciVal, a publication and citation analysis tool which analyses tens of millions of research publications to illustrate the current state of disciplines. Researchers will learn how to identify leaders in their field and how to find potential collaborators and research partners. Find out more about SciVal at http://www.library.pitt.edu/bibliometric-services.

Friday, March 3

Understanding and Practicing Map Literacy

Jessica Benner, Doctoral Candidate, School of Information Sciences
Everyday we interact with visualizations of space, aka maps. How we interact with a map is determined by many factors. Who made it? What is it trying to convey? Where did the underlying data come from? We ask these and more questions, often unconsciously, as we decide whether a map contains the information we seek. This workshop will begin with a brief history of the map, introduce the concept of map literacy and finish with participants interacting with a series of digital and paper maps using the information they obtained during the first part of the session.

Friday, February 24

Editing Wikipedia for Beginners

This workshop will cover the basics of editing Wikipedia to improve one of the world’s most popular information resources. Learn how to use the Visual Editor to update content, add references, connect articles to each other, and more. After a brief training, participants will engage in editing Wikipedia as part of the ongoingPittsburgh Wikipedia Redd-up-a-thon event series or on pages of their choosing. Attendees are strongly encouraged to create a Wikipedia user account prior to the start of the workshop.

Friday, February 17

Basic Text Processing with Python

What can you do with a piece of text? The very first steps in processing a text file would involve (1) reading it in, (2) tokenizing the text string into a list of words, and (3) compiling and exploring word frequency counts. With a beginner-friendly programming language like Python, it is possible to learn to accomplish these tasks in a short period of time. In this workshop, we will try them out using Python and NLTK (Natural Language ToolKit), a popular Python module. Knowledge of neither will be assumed.

Friday, February 10

Hypothes.is Web Annotation

Hypothes.is is a web annotation tool that can be used to highlight, annotate and edit online documents, and export data. This workshop will teach participants the basics of web annotation with the Hypothes.is Chrome extension, as well as how to create private groups, and how to use Hypothes.is as a teaching tool.

Multimedia Digital Narratives

Digital tools have introduced new modes for telling research stories, enabling people to work outside of the more traditional structure of the essay, connecting text with timelines, maps, videos, and other visual material. This workshop provides participants a space for exploring digital writing tools for creating collaborative, non-linear, and multimodal scholarship. We will explore multiple tools for generating maps, timelines, and image collections, as well as introduce Scalar, a free authoring and publishing platform that allows users to bring together their writing and imported media. We will look at examples of Scalar projects and experiment with its functionalities through hands-on play.

Friday, January 27

Digital Humanities Approaches to Text Analysis

Computational text analysis is widely regarded as the most established subfield of digital humanities. Integrating large-scale information gathering, data analysis, and visualization techniques into a dissertation, scholarly article, or book project—even if done sparingly—can have tremendous benefits. The pathway to integrating these tools, however, can be daunting. This interactive session will focus on well-established methods and exciting new approaches to text analysis, as well as common pathways for skills acquisition and project development. No experience with computer programming or code is needed, as this workshop will focus on surveying approaches and establishing common strategies for implementation. Participants are encouraged to come with a brief description of a project or research question that might benefit from a computational text analysis component.

Friday, January 20

Introduction to Data Visualization with Tableau

Tableau is a data visualization tool that is being used to help analyze data and illustrate the patterns and insights behind them. This interactive workshop will introduce researchers or students to Tableau Public, a free access version of Tableau. Laptops are required; if necessary it may be possible to check out a laptop from Hillman's lending desk (come early).

Friday, January 13

Securing Your Information: Privacy and Encryption Online
Thinking about protecting your information through privacy and encryption tools is important for individual data, academic research, and for the continued freedom of expression in online communities. This workshop will discuss some tools and first steps that individuals can take to protect themselves online, as well as ways that the library can support the data privacy of its patrons and their research data. No previous experience with encryption or security tools is required.